An original watercolour painting of the first edition of JK Rowlings’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone sold for $1.9 million at a US auction.
First auctioned in 2001 before the book series was complete. The artwork sold for more than three times the expected price to become the most valuable Harry Potter item ever sold.
The artwork had been expected to sell for between $400,000 and $600,000, which was the highest pre-sale estimate for a Harry Potter-related work.
The four-way bidding took 10 minutes to finish on Wednesday. The identity of the buyer was not mentioned.
Thomas Taylor, the artist who drew the illustration, was just 23 years old in 1997 when he created the iconic image of Harry Potter standing in front of the Hogwarts Express and he did it using concentrated watercolours with black pencil outlines and took him two days to finish.
Taylor was one of the first people to read the manuscript for the original Harry Potter book, which went on to sell millions of copies and spawned a lucrative franchise including movies and theme parks.